Testing Government and Influence

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#46 Post by Oberlus »

Should be possible or impossible to win without ever focusing a planet into influence? (win with -948684 IP and no policies or only a few adopted early on, playing against player of similar skills and luck).

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#47 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Winning with an influence debt should be possible, much like one could win a game without doing any substantial research.

But it shouldn't be easy or generally practical? Having an influence debt should rather have other downsides, like making ships much easier to mind control, and in general being unable to perform actions that cost influence.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#48 Post by Oberlus »

I think more ("boring") tech effects need to be moved to policies. Currently, the best way to win a game, by far, is not investing in influence, because the loss in production from focusing planets to influence exceeds by far the ("fun") policy benefits. From current tech effects, more than half population bonuses, several production and supply bonuses, maybe some weapons refinements, should require a policy in place (apart from the ones already moved to policies). This probably would require extra slots.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#49 Post by Ophiuchus »

Restricting building ships if you are on influence deficit should solve this issue as well. Hm that is basically the current upkeep mechanic just not based on the number of ships.

Or make fleet less reliable/less efficient if there is a deficit. So e.g. in some logarithmic fashion decrease damage of ships (e.g. -10 IP -> -10%, -100 IP -> -20%, -1000IP -> -30%). Or distribute negative influence budget as structure damage to ships (hm dont like it).

Most voices in the forum also wanted a "real" upkeep instead anyway so we should also consider paying fleet upkeep in influence. Biggest question there is the one we are talking about - what is the bad effect if you cant pay the upkeep?

Maybe disconnecting number of ships from more-expensive-ship type upkeep would be more pallatable than the direct version. You pay every turn influence upkeep based on size of your fleet, so without going into deficit that just work up to a certain fleet size. if your fleet is too big you will go into deficit over time and that also slows down adding new ships to the fleet by making building ships more expensive? Side note: loosing your fleet would not get rid of the deficit like it happens with current upkeep mechanic.
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#50 Post by Oberlus »

That's the same as if we make planets rebel when influence upkeep isn't paid. Disconnect/lose/degrade part of your fleet. Lose part of your planets.
... until influence deficits sorts itself out, even without player interference.

I guess if it is unfun with planets, it will be unfun with ships.

I do prefer planet rebelion, given that we would be letting planets to deflect from influence-lacking empires to influence-buoyant empires.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#51 Post by wobbly »

You could make negative influence a penalty to all meters. If you do it as a multiplier with an S curve and an inflection point at 0 influence you could get the % penalty at the asymtotes to roughly match the % of colonies needed to maintain equality. e.g. if you need 1 colony out of 4 to maintain 0 influence, a -25% max penalty would drop you to around the same point if you put all colonies on production.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#52 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 1:20 pm You could make negative influence a penalty to all meters. If you do it as a multiplier with an S curve and an inflection point at 0 influence you could get the % penalty at the asymtotes to roughly match the % of colonies needed to maintain equality. e.g. if you need 1 colony out of 4 to maintain 0 influence, a -25% max penalty would drop you to around the same point if you put all colonies on production.
Seems like a good place to start thinking. But there is the big difference that influence is accumulating, so for the first case you have ~25% penalty flat, while for the second case you would start with 0% penalty ramping up until it reaches 25% penality and then going up further. Not sure how to put that into the thinking. Or were you talking the influence difference per turn? Could you give an example?
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#53 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:48 pm I do prefer planet rebelion, given that we would be letting planets to deflect from influence-lacking empires to influence-buoyant empires.
Defecting from one empire to another could be also done in multiple ways. Like bidding or simply one turn payment for joining your empire based on stability, number of troops and maybe population? Maybe also building cost(?). Or only based on stability might be enough.

In principle the other empire could rebid for the colony. That would work ok with the target meters but probably sucks with our max meters (one turn could be enough to set them to zero).

I would like that an unstable planet could suddenly switch sides so it fights suddenly on the other side. Should be expensive though.
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#54 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:48 pm That's the same as if we make planets rebel when influence upkeep isn't paid. Disconnect/lose/degrade part of your fleet. Lose part of your planets.
... until influence deficits sorts itself out, even without player interference.

I guess if it is unfun with planets, it will be unfun with ships.
The main upside of rebellion is that rebellion in itself is a very interesting (in a narrative sense). The loss of a valued colony after mistreating its population. Tragic!

The main downsides of rebellion i see are the introduction of things to manage (what one needs to do after rebellion; how player manage this - simply add another formula for "rebellion cost" vs "colony upkeep cost" in their maintenance spreadsheet?) and also the choice when/where rebellions happen and how predictable this is.
If we go for rebellion i would hope that those happen/develop in clusters (lower the occurence, up the price) so that a rebellion is always a challenge and not just something you just take care off when it happens. Or keep the occurence and you need a swift answer else it spreads and becomes a real problem, so you need to be prepared.

Degradation is a lot more boring but more clear/uniform (all of your ships/planets are at 70% effectiveness).

Note that UI options for both cases suck pretty much.
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#55 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:03 pm The main downsides of rebellion i see are the introduction of things to manage (what one needs to do after rebellion; how player manage this - simply add another formula for "rebellion cost" vs "colony upkeep cost" in their maintenance spreadsheet?) and also the choice when/where rebellions happen and how predictable this is.
Dunno what are we discussing (again) here, but:
- It should be predictable (no need to turn FO into a slot machine, apart from random combat targetting).
- It should happen in few planets (because losing the whole empire at the same time because you failed to read that red number next to the fist icon is quite unfun and nonsensical and breaks the purpose of using influence to tame growth).
- It should happen after a few turns after warning.
- It should be possible to halt planet rebellion by taking actions after you are warned about the imminent rebellion.

If we go for rebellion i would hope that those happen/develop in clusters (lower the occurence, up the price) so that a rebellion is always a challenge and not just something you just take care off when it happens.
What is a challenge and what is "something you just take care of" is quite subjective. In the eyes of my wife, everything a player does in FO is "something you take care of while neglecting your own life, which is a real challenge".

In any case, the kind of actions I imagine could solve a influence-deficit situation (that provoked some unrest in certain planets that could end up in rebellion if not dealt with) are changing some planet foci to influence, scrapping some ships, and little else. Not exactly a "challenge".


The point is Geoff said no to unfun effects like planet rebellion.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 1:10 am I don't want to add another based mainly around having an influence debt cause additional penalities directly, as this would potentially be a death-spiral situation that would be difficult or impossible to get out of, and probably rather unfun for players.
I don't think what we are talking here could cause a death-spiral situation difficult to get out of, if the influence deficit solves itself out by losing the planets that more infuence decifit cause to the empire.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#56 Post by Oberlus »

It's impossible to finish games with positive influence.
Culprit is base influence upkeep: 0.2 * #colonies.
Summed up for all colonies, total empire upkeep is 0.2 * #colonies^2.0

If I make a PR that changes that to 0.2*#colonies^1.5 (i.e. upkeep per colony 0.2*#colonies^0.5), or make confederation policy to do that change, would it be welcome? I think I remember Geoff or Vezzra said something about not using fractional powers, for KISS.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#57 Post by wobbly »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 2:20 pm
wobbly wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 1:20 pm You could make negative influence a penalty to all meters. If you do it as a multiplier with an S curve and an inflection point at 0 influence you could get the % penalty at the asymtotes to roughly match the % of colonies needed to maintain equality. e.g. if you need 1 colony out of 4 to maintain 0 influence, a -25% max penalty would drop you to around the same point if you put all colonies on production.
Seems like a good place to start thinking. But there is the big difference that influence is accumulating, so for the first case you have ~25% penalty flat, while for the second case you would start with 0% penalty ramping up until it reaches 25% penality and then going up further. Not sure how to put that into the thinking. Or were you talking the influence difference per turn? Could you give an example?
I meant something a bit like this? With the curve never crossing the blue dotted lines, so the penalty never goes above 25% . The idea being you'd generally want to keep influence in the positive range. You can ignore the numbers on the graph, they were arbitrary, I just wanted to get the basic shape.
graph.png
graph.png (34.59 KiB) Viewed 819 times

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#58 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:17 pm Summed up for all colonies, total empire upkeep is 0.2 * #colonies^2.0

If I make a PR that changes that to 0.2*#colonies^1.5 (i.e. upkeep per colony 0.2*#colonies^0.5), or make confederation policy to do that change, would it be welcome? I think I remember Geoff or Vezzra said something about not using fractional powers, for KISS.
I also remember that about fractional powers. I also think that square number of colonies is too much. So i'd be ok with ^1.5 for the moment.

How many planets should be fine and sustainable without a special policy? I mean at least zero influence output per turn and adding a planet causes you to either have to go negative or you have less resource production afterwards (because you had to switch two planets to influence focus). Something like ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred colonies?
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#59 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Unless it's proven necessary, I don't want to have a global penalty to meters due to having a negative influence stockpile. I don't think it interacts well with the other mechanics for setting meters, and a better way to introduce such a factor would be making individual bonuses to meters from some policies or buildings or techs or species require a positive influence stockpile or similar. But I'd still only do that in a subset of cases, as it somewhat duplicates the existing requirement for a minimum stability on planets for some effects.

Probably a better mechanism would be global empire effects, in particular reducing species opinions of the empire as a whole (which still needs to be implemented as a tracked and used set of numbers). This should make it harder to have good relations with native populated planets to get any bonuses from them without invasion, and will indirectly contribute to planet (in)stability, and thus meter bonuses that are stability-dependent.

Having influence cost per planet scale with the sqrt(# owned planets) is probably fine. Something like planets ^ 0.282 would be more problematic.
How many planets should be fine and sustainable without a special policy? Something like ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred colonies?
That's probably a balance issue... but maybe 5 to start, depending on the species and policies and such. Point is you need to do stuff to maintain an empire, which might be catering to species preferences with policies or admin buildings or (other) focus settings. The policies in question don't need to be ones specifiically about being able to control more planets, but could also be others that your empire's species like.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#60 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Wed Feb 03, 2021 5:42 pmto have good relations with native populated planets to get any bonuses from them without invasion
That part is an utopia for now. There is Native Appropriation policy (which isn't that good), and nothing else to stop you from conquering any native on sight (if you want to play this 4X to win).

Having influence cost per planet scale with the sqrt(# owned planets) is probably fine. Something like planets ^ 0.282 would be more problematic.
Amen.
With that it is more than enough to keep influence upkeep under control even for games with thousands of planets.

Ophiuchus wrote:How many planets should be fine and sustainable without a special policy? Something like ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred colonies?
That's probably a balance issue... but maybe 5 to start, depending on the species and policies and such.
I'm taking as a balance objetive to require about 30% of your planets focused to influence with all influence production boosts and influence upkeep cuts (from techs, buildings and policies) for 1000 planets to keep steady influence stockpile, with 10, 30, 100 and 300 the number of planets to require getting the next influence policy/tech/building.

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